Wedding Wednesday: Paring Down the Colors

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

I'm a huge fan of COLOR! So when I initially started coming up with wedding color schemes, I decided on lots of colors. Why not have a wedding full of fun and color, right? I did have a direction to go in and one request from the future husband to be.

M initially said he wanted to pay tribute to his hunting hobby by incorporating safety orange...a color often worn while hunting. (he initially said camo...and...well....yeah)

My thoughts were, okay, orange. I don't particularly love orange but I can make it work. So I decided a color palette that incorporated lots of the colors I love and M's safety orange (which was actually dulled down a bit). I decided on a palette that looked a little like this.

I loved all the bright colors and felt like it was very me. It incorporates the orange but doesn't allow it to stand out too much from the other colors. This was to be my color palette for the wedding, until I started looking at decor and had a chat with a good friend of mine who does a lot of entertaining/party planning/decorating.

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You see, I was having trouble incorporating ALL of the colors without the reception feeling like a carnival or a kid's party. I wanted it to be "ME" but also look like a wedding. My friend suggested not having more than three wedding colors. Decorating in three colors is a nice balance but adding more than that can make it look busy and confuse the eye. Very good point. And since I'd already been leaning towards thinking I had too many colors (carnival, remember?) I decided I needed to pare down my wedding colors. In the meantime M decided he didn't really love the idea of having orange and wanted to probably use the blue or green in the ties/pocket squares of the guys' suits. (YAY!!!!)

So I then had to pare down my color palette from 5 to 3, eliminating 2 colors. I eliminated my two least favorite colors (in general) and my two least favorite colors in the palette and came up with this.

No, I didn't just eliminate orange and purple because I hate Clemson...that was just a delicious consequence. HA! I also wanted to change up the shades of the green to make it a little less bright and lime green. M loves blue and green so he's going to use those and I had to throw in the pink. I mean, these are probably my three favorite colors of all time, so why NOT use them, right?

It's also a lot easier to plan for decorations and tableware when you only have three colors. A lot easier. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. We will also be using the colors white and light gray as accents.

What colors did you have for YOUR wedding and how did you decide on them?

Great palette. I didn't really go by color - we got married on the beach, so we just picked up nature's colors - sand colored napkins, navy dresses for the girls to pick up the water, blue and green striped ties for the guys to pick up the beach shrub.

My husband thought it was fun to joke about having mossy oak or safety orange for the guys' tuxedo vests. I was not having it! My wedding colors were a hard-to-define green, light pink, and then silver/white/black accents. I didn't have a really specific plan in mind when I started, so I just started looking at bridesmaids dresses and found one I liked, and then picked the color that I liked best in that style, and then I knew I wanted calla lillies in my bouquet, and the florist suggested these fun pink accent flowers, and that was how I decided! Pink and Green are probably my favorite colors, so it really made sense. I'm excited to see how all your planning comes together - I love the bright colors you chose!

I had two different color schemes for my wedding - one for the ceremony, and another for the reception. The church I got married in had deep green carpet, and I didn't want the bridesmaid dresses to clash, so I went with pale green dresses (two of my three bridesmaids had green eyes, so it was a good color anyway). My favorite flowers are yellow roses, and my favorite color is purple, so my ceremony colors ended up being pale green, pale yellow, and deep purple.For the reception, I really wanted to use my extensive collection of blue & white china for the centerpieces, cake topper, and serving dishes. Since yellow looks so great with blue, we used yellow Gerber daises, and my reception colors ended up being pale green, yellow, and deep blue (with a few purple accents to tie it in with the ceremony).